


A Very Ecclesiastic-Looking Badger

by Samayla



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 02:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17398019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samayla/pseuds/Samayla
Summary: In which Jonathan Strange's attempt to communicate with an ornamental pear tree does not go at all according to plan, and he learns that, in future, he might do well to regard a little dirt.*formerly titled "A Terribly Funny Story"





	A Very Ecclesiastic-Looking Badger

“Really, Henry, I am surprised at you,” said Jonathan Strange to his brother-in-law one afternoon. The gentlemen were in the garden, where the magician had spent the greater part of the morning attempting to coax the spirit of an ornamental pear tree into their discussion of its annual pruning. “You are always saying I should be more serious.”

The previous spring, the Stranges’ gardener, Mr Underhill, had taken a bad fall from the tree, an incident which Arabella had mentioned again just that morning. As Jonathan had only just finished reading a treatise on forest spirits not three days past, he’d seen it as a practical opportunity to test out a few theories he’d developed on that front.

Henry Woodhope, however, failed to see the merit in the endeavor. “Jonathan, why can Mr Underhill not simply take more care on the ladder this year? I really do not think that Mr Norrell—”

“Of course Mr Norrell won’t approve,” said the magician as he flipped rapidly through his mentor’s copy of Lanchester’s _Language of Birds_. “That is precisely why I am testing these theories here, and not Hurtfew Abbey or Hanover Square.”

Jonathan made a sudden, triumphant noise and halted his frantic reading. He’d found the entry he was looking for. “Now, Henry, if you would be so kind, I require a pear from the tree in question — No! Don’t pick a fresh one!” he exclaimed, startling his brother-in-law half out of his skin. The magician scarcely noticed, having returned to his reading. “Imagine my breaking your finger off and then asking to speak with you. Even if you did condescend to speak to me, Henry, I doubt even you could find anything of a very savory nature to say to me. Just choose a soft one from the path, if you please.”

Henry obliged, presenting his brother-in-law with a sticky, half-rotted pear from the ground beneath the tree. “I require a leaf and a branch as well, Henry,” Jonathan instructed with perfect disregard for the juice that dripped toward his elbow as he took the pear. “A handful of dirt, as well, if you would. Just from around the roots there, Henry.”

The dirt clung to his sticky fingers and caked in black crescents beneath his fingernails, and Henry made a comment about how terribly dirty this endeavor was becoming.

The magician paid him no mind, now turning the book sideways to squint at a note in the margin, some warning of Norrell’s, no doubt, in his usual, cramped handwriting. He muttered to himself for a moment before taking the shriveled leaf and twig from Henry. He arranged them along with the pear on the ground before him, then held out his hand for the dirt, which he flung across his own shoes. He placed his hand on the trunk of the pear tree and muttered some words beneath his breath. The tree creaked, and some birds flew up suddenly form the hedge that bordered the garden, but nothing else appeared to happen.

Jonathan frowned, but then collected himself after a moment. He consulted the book again. “I suppose this tree is unused to being thus addressed,” he mused. “After all, how often have we passed it by with nary a glance? Perhaps it is even offended. How do you suppose one might make an apology to a pear tree, Henry?”

Henry did not answer.

“Really, Henry, it is remarkable how very alike you and your sister are. Arabella frets over dirt, too, but I have told her a thousand times, it will wash. We magicians never regard a little dirt.” He paused to think for a moment. “Perhaps, if we were to pile some fresh soil around the base of the tree, it might look upon us more favorably. What do you think, Henry?”

Still, his brother-in-law did not answer.

“Well, if you are determined to pout like a child, you should not expect it to have the least effect upon me. My father went to great lengths in his own tantrums, and his contrariness has conferred a perfect immunity upon me.”

Jonathan raised his eyes from his book at last, to see how Henry would take such a declaration, but he was nowhere to be seen. He spun on the spot, but could not tell where he might have gone.

Just then, Arabella materialized at the end of the garden, bearing a tray laden with sandwiches and lemonade. “Where is Henry? You two have missed lunch again.”

The magician blinked. He’d assumed he’d gone back inside, but surely he would not have missed lunch if he had been in the house.

Arabella laughed indulgently. “Lost him, have you? If you’d take your nose out of your books once in a while, Jonathan…” She placed the lunch tray atop the birdbath. “You get started on these, lest our garden guest get any ideas.”

Jonathan whirled in alarm. “Garden guest?”

“There,” Arabella answered, gesturing toward the edge of the garden, where a little badger was nosing about. “Over by the hedge.”

Jonathan squinted at the creature for a moment. “Does that badger look a little… ecclesiastic to you, Bell?”

“Ecclesiastic? Jonathan, whatever are you talking about?”

“Nothing, Bell,” he answered absently, starting to approach the badger. His mind was running in a million different directions at once.

“You leave that badger be, Jonathan,” Arabella warned him sternly.

He froze, momentarily torn, but then returned to the tray of sandwiches. “Of course, darling,” he said lightly.

“Eat your lunch, Jonathan, and I’ll send Henry along from the house.”

As soon as she was gone, the magician dropped his sandwich and scanned the garden for the badger. “Henry?” he hissed, wary of his wife overhearing. “Henry!” There! Beside the rose bush!

He worked ridiculously hard to capture the silly beast, which retreated almost at once into the hedge, forcing Jonathan to climb in after him. He congratulated himself on having had the good sense to shed his jacket for the adventure, but the thorns absolutely shredded his shirt.

“Henry, you idiot! I’m trying to help you!” he growled in exasperation.

The badger, cornered at last against the garden wall, turned on him. It scaled his pant leg, then scrabbled up and over his shoulder, drawing blood in long scratches across his shoulder and back as it took off.

“Jonathan!” Arabella had come back outside in time to see her husband fighting his way back out of the hedge and taking off after the terrified badger. She snagged his sleeve as he made to dash past her. “Jonathan! What on earth are you doing? You’re bleeding! You leave the poor thing alone!”

“Arabella,” Jonathan panted in some indignation, “I must catch that badger!”

“Whatever for?” she demanded.

The badger disappeared around the corner of the garden shed, and Jonathan tore out of her grip, staggering after it.

“Jonathan!”

“It’s Henry!” he bellowed back. He got around the corner of the shed to see that the gate was open. Already, the badger was nearing the copse of trees on the edge of the side yard. He would never catch him, and even if he could, he could never hope to find him, in among the brambles and tree roots.

“Jonathan,” Arabella asked as her husband stomped back to her side, “what do you mean ‘it’s Henry?’”

“I mean,” he panted crossly, “that I have transfigured your brother into a rather ecclesiastic-looking badger, Bell.”

Arabella laughed a little helplessly, but his expression did not change. “You cannot be serious!”

The magician picked at the torn fabric of his sleeve to inspect the stinging cut beneath. “I am quite serious, Arabella,” he snapped. “Your brother is a badger, and I have just lost him, thanks to your meddling.”

“My meddling!”

“Yes, your meddling!” Jonathan swiped irritably at the side of his neck, where something warm and wet was running beneath his collar. His hand came away bloody. “If you had not delayed me, I might have stood a chance of catching him, but now he is gone.” He shook out his handkerchief and pressed it to the cut on his neck. “All logic and common sense seem to have deserted him. He’s become entirely unreasonable.”

“Jonathan! Henry can hardly be blamed if you have upset him! What on earth could have possessed you to turn him into a badger?”

“Bell, I did not intend to turn him into a badger! I meant to discuss garden maintenance with the pear tree!” He took a deep breath and then continued more calmly in an effort to reassure his wife. “You must understand: I am a magician. These things happen. It is nothing to concern yourself with.”

“’These things happen,’ Jonathan? You are not the Raven King, for all your sand horses and daydreaming of the King’s Roads! You cannot go about turning people into animals! You —”

“Arabella,” he cut in, “I have already told you I did not mean to do it. One moment, Henry was complaining of the dirt on his hands, and the next, he was a badger. I cannot account for it at —” He stopped his lecture, struck by a sudden thought. “Perhaps there were badger bones beneath the tree!” He started for the tree but then stopped to appraise it warily. “Or perhaps he did offend the tree after all.”

Arabella seized her husband by the shoulders and forced him to look at her. “Jonathan! Listen to yourself! Henry was turned into a badger for offending a pear tree?”

“Who knows how far the trees’ influence extends, Bell. The trees of England were the Raven King’s favored allies, after all…” He stopped himself before he could provoke his wife once more with further talk of the Raven King.

Arabella, too, took a deep breath. She was embarrassingly close to hysterics, and such nonsense would do none of them the least bit of good. “But what has that got to do with Henry?” she asked steadily.

“I’m not sure yet, Bell,” her husband answered. He downed a glass of lemonade. “Come on, I need a book.”

Arabella hesitated, but Jonathan stopped and ushered her on ahead of himself. “Leave the sandwiches for now. They may well lure him back.”

“Yes,” Arabella said dryly. “I daresay maiming you was hungry work.”

“I am not ‘maimed,’ Arabella.”

Their argument carried with them into the house, until they parted ways. He made for the library, wishing he had the library at Hurtfew at his disposal. She, meanwhile, chose to enlist the maids’ help to make one more search of the house, hoping to find Henry in some overlooked corner or another, reading a book or writing next week’s sermon.

Over the course of the afternoon, there was little change in the situation. Arabella and the maids had not discovered Henry hiding in the house, and tea-time came and went unobserved as they searched. As he did not come wandering in from parts unknown, they were forced to leave the matter up to the magician and carry on with the rest of their day.

For his own part, Jonathan had not set one foot outside of the library all afternoon, except to put Mr Underhill and the under-gardeners on a watch for the badger out in the grounds. All manner of creaking and splashing and cursing came from the library, so that when dinner time arrived, but he did not, Arabella was forced to seek him out herself , as the maids were all too timid to disturb a magician at work.

“I am busy, Bell,” Jonathan answered shortly when she told him the chicken was growing cold.

“Jonathan, you are being absurd. You left breakfast early. You have missed lunch and tea, and now you propose to miss dinner as well. Starving yourself will not help my brother in the least.”

Jonathan allowed himself to be led downstairs and into the dining room, where they found Henry, seated at the table and seemingly unconcerned with anything but the roast chicken he’d pulled in front of his seat.

“Henry!” He looked a mess, dusty and distinctly rumpled, but otherwise intact. “Where have you been?”

“My dear fellow! However did you manage to change back?”

“Change back?” Henry asked around a mouthful of chicken. “What do you mean?”

“You were a badger,” the magician exclaimed with an expression of great interest. “Do you not remember?”

“Badger?” He swallowed thickly and took a drink of water from the cup his sister poured for him. “No, I was in Hopton Heath. Been all afternoon in walking back.”

“Hopton Heath?” Arabella asked, perplexed.

“What on earth were you doing there?” Strange demanded.

Henry looked at him in exasperation, as if his brother-in-law were being particularly dense. “I haven’t the faintest idea, Jonathan. One minute, you were trying to talk to the pear tree in the garden, and the next, I was standing beneath the one in the square at Hopton Heath, which was creaking and bowing as if in a high wind, though it was beautifully sunny and calm this afternoon.”

“Remarkable!” Jonathan dragged a chair near to Henry’s and assaulted him with all manner of questions. What was it like? How did it feel? Did he see anything? “Think now, Henry. You really must tell me everything you can remember about the experience.”

Henry, who merely wished to eat his chicken in peace, was quick to grow impatient with the magician’s questions. “There was no ‘experience,’ Jonathan,” he insisted. “It was Hopton Heath. We were all there not a month past for the fair. Now, I really am quite famished.”

“My dear, dear fellow,” Jonathan exclaimed, “how can you eat at a time like this? You have just traveled by magic! No matter that it was only to Hopton Heath — such a thing has not been done since the days of the Raven King. If only I knew how I had done it. You had the dirt and the pear juice… Perhaps you were the envoy… You say there was a pear tree in Hopton Heath as well? Perhaps the seeds grew—”

Henry sighed and cut him off. “Really, Jonathan, I found the whole thing terribly inconvenient! It is nearly six miles from Hopton Heath. Appearing suddenly in the square and putting the pear tree out of temper did not endear me to the locals, and as it was not a market day, there was not a soul on the roads with a cart or carriage to assist me. I have not eaten since breakfast. I am tired and dirty and sunburned, and I have a blister on my left heel from walking all that way. I wish only to eat some dinner, take a bath, and go to bed. I will answer all your questions tomorrow, but only if you leave me be tonight.”

“Yes, well, of course you are tired, Henry,” Jonathan soothed. “I daresay the whole thing was quite unexpected, and it is no wonder if your ordeal has made you cross.” Jonathan poured a glass of wine for his brother-in-law. “You have my sincerest apologies.”

“Thank you,” Henry sniffed. He drank some wine, and Arabella persuaded him to put some chicken on a proper plate, with potatoes and green beans, and by the time Jonathan and Arabella had dished their own plates, he was feeling much more himself. “What on earth happened to you, Jonathan?” he asked suddenly, seeming to have only just noticed the tears and blood stains on the magician’s shirt.

“I ran afoul of a badger,” he said inattentively. Without the distraction of his books, his hunger had made itself known almost as urgently as Henry’s had done.

“Wait. What about that badger?” asked Arabella. At Henry’s blank look, she related the events of the afternoon.

“Are you quite certain you were not a badger today, Henry?” Jonathan asked.

“Quite certain,” Henry answered. When his brother-in-law continued to look skeptical, he insisted, “I have never been a badger a day in my life.”

Jonathan shrugged and returned his chicken and potatoes. “It was just a badger then, I suppose.”

“The poor thing,” Arabella exclaimed. “Imagine chasing an innocent badger about the garden! You’ve probably traumatized it!”

“I traumatized the badger?” Jonathan demanded. His fork hit his plate with a clatter as he dropped it to pluck dramatically at the tears in his shirtsleeves. “What about me?”

“You have only yourself to blame, Jonathan. I did tell you to leave the poor creature be.”

“I thought it was your brother!”

“I feel I ought to be offended by that somehow, Jonathan,” Henry laughed.

“Not at all, Henry. It was a terribly ecclesiastic-looking badger, I assure you.”

“Oh, yes,” Arabella answered with a mischievous smile. “Very dignified as it scrambled over your shoulder and skidded past the garden shed.”


End file.
